William Herschel | Article about William Herschel by The Free Dictionary William Herschel | Article about William Herschel by The Free Dictionary Also found in: Dictionary , Thesaurus , Wikipedia . Herschel, William (originally Friedrich Wilhelm). Born Nov. 15, 1738, in Hanover; died Aug. 25, 1822, at Slough, near London. British astronomer and optician. Member of the London Royal Society (from 1781) and honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1789). The son of a regimental musician, Herschel was educated at home (music and languages). In 1757 he moved to England, where he became known as a musician, composer, and music teacher. Herschel, who studied astronomy on his own, made hundreds of mirrors for telescopes. Between 1786 and 1789 he built his largest, 40-ft (12-m) reflector with a mirror diameter of 122 cm, for the first time making effective use of a single-mirror scheme (Herschelian telescope).

He began observations of the sky in 1773. Among his discoveries were the planet Uranus (Mar. 13, 1781), two satellites of Uranus (1787), their retrograde motion (1797), and two satellites of Saturn (1789); he also measured the period of rotation of Saturn and its rings (1790). He discovered the movement of the solar system through space. In the mid-1770’s he began a series of surveys of the stellar sky by his “scoop method” (counts of stars in selected areas). As a result, Herschel for the first time outlined the general form of our galaxy, estimating its dimensions and inferring that it was isolated in space as one of the stellar “islands” in the universe. Herschel interpreted the compact stellar condensations as actual clusters of stars. This work by Herschel marked the beginning of stellar statistics. Herschel discovered the existence of binary stars (1803) and compiled three catalogs of double stars.

One of his greatest contributions was the discovery of more than 2,500 new nebulas and star clusters (1786, 1789, and 1802). Herschel noted 182 double and multiple nebulas and guessed at the physical connection of their components. He ascertained for the first time (1784) a pattern of distribution of nebulas—their tendency to cluster in layers; the “stratum in Coma Berenices” that he singled out makes up a sizable part of the equatorial zone of the Vaucouleurs Supergalaxy (discovered in 1953). Herschel substantiated (1791) the existence of “true” nebulas—from rarefied self-luminous matter—and advanced the nebular stellar-cosmogonic hypothesis of the condensation of stars and their clusters from diffuse matter, developing it (1802 and 1811) into a conception of the evolution of cosmic matter. Herschel was one of the first to begin the study of the solar and stellar spectra and in 1800 discovered infrared rays in the solar spectrum.

Herschel was assisted in designing and making telescopes by his younger brother, Alexander, a talented mechanic; later he was assisted by his son, J. Herschel. Herschel received a great deal of help in his observations from his younger sister, Caroline Herschel (1750-1848), one of the few women astronomers. WORKS William Herschel (1738-1822) Friedrich Wilhelm (William) Herschel (November 15, 1738 - August 25, 1822) Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel was born in Hannover (Germany) in 1738 as son of Issak Herschel (1707-1767), a musician in the regimental band of the Foot-Guards, and Anna Ilse (b. Moritzen). F.W. Herschel himself became also musician (an oboist) and joined his father and his brother Jacob in that band. In 1759, after experiencing the 1757 battle at Hastenbeck, he and Jacob went to England.

Jacob returned to Hannover after two years, but Wilhelm (called William in England) stayed. After teaching music for some time, he became organist at Halifax in 1765, and organist and conductor at Bath in 1766. In 1772, William took home in Bath, and was joined by his sister Caroline . On May 10, 1773, at age 35, William Herschel purchased a copy of James Ferguson's book, Astronomy ( Ferguson 1756 ), and found interest in astronomy. His early books also included Robert Smith's Opticks ( Smith 1738 ) and Harmonics ( Smith 1749 ). Consequently, he started to become a skilled maker of the most powerful telescopes of his time: After 1774, he had acquired skills to make specula mirrors superior to any which had been made before. Moreover, he started to observe the heavens; among his first objects, observed on the 4th of March, 1774, was the Orion Nebula , which he had found mentioned in Smith's Opticks.

On March 13, 1781 William Herschel discovered what he first thought to be a comet, but was later found to be planet Uranus. In recognition of this discovery, he was elected to the Royal Society on December 7, 1781, and awarded an annual grant by King George III of England, which enabled him to give up his carrer in music (on May 19, 1782) and concentrate on astronomy as the Court Astronomer of the King. On December 7, 1781, the day of his election to the Royal Society, his friend, William Watson, presented a copy of Messier 's (and Méchain 's) Catalog of Nebulae and Star Clusters to William. This catalog stimulated his interest in clusters and nebulae. At that time, he had only observed four nebulae: The Orion Nebula together with its companion M43 (1774), globular cluster M13 in Hercules (1779), and the Andromeda "Nebula" M31 (1780).

In August 1782, he started to investigate Messier's objects with his superior telescopes; his first observation was that of globular cluster M5 in Serpens. Soon, he "surmised" (to say it in his own words), "that several nebulae might yet remain undiscovered." After a first finding (of the Saturn Nebula, NGC 7009 ) following September 1782, he started his sytematical and extensive survey of the skies visible from his location in England in March, 1783, always assisted by his sister Caroline. After initial trial-and-error attempts, he started with regular, systematical sky "sweeps" on October 23, 1783, with his 18.7-inch (47.5 cm) aperture, 20-foot focal length reflector, with standard magnification 157 and a field of view of 15'4". He made his next discovery on October 28, 1783: NGC 7184, Herschel's H II.1, a little conspicuous galaxy in Aquarius of 11.2 mag.

Only 1 1/2 years later, he had cataloged 1,000 new objects ( W.H. 1786 ), completed a second 1,000 in 1789 ( W.H. 1789 ), and a final additional 500 objects in 1802 ( W.H. 1802 ), so he ended up in discovering about 2500 new "nebulae" and star clusters in about 20 years. In 1783, Herschel published his observations leading to the discovery of the Solar Motion. He determined that our solar system is moving between the neighboring stars in the direction of the star Lambda Herculis; he introduced the term Solar Apex for this dierction ( W.H. 1783 ). In 1787, William Herschel discovered two moons of Uranus, Titania and Oberon. On May 8, 1788, William Herschel married Mary Pitt, former Baldwin, the widow of the wealthy London merchant John Pitt, who had died in 1786.

On March 7, 1792, their only son, John Herschel , was born in Slough, England. In 1789, William Herschel completed his largest telescope, a 48-inch (1.2-meter) aperture, after efforts of about two years. On August 28, on the occasion of first light for this instrument, he discovered Saturn's sixth known moon Enceladus, and on September 17, its seventh known moon, Mimas. This telescope was world's largest telescope for over 50 years, until Lord Rosse erected his 72-inch "Leviathan" at Parsonstown in 1845. However, this large scope was difficult to handle and thus less used than his favorite 18.7-inch reflector which was used to discover most of the nebulae. Had he used it more frequently, he soon had discovered more cosmic phenomena such as the "spiral nebulae", a discovery now left to Lord Rosse. William Herschel visited Paris in 1801 where he met Napoleon Bonaparte as well as French scientists inluding Laplace and the old Charles Messier .

Sir William Herschel died on August 25, 1822 in Slough, England, and was buried in the church of Upton on September 7. Consequently, his sister Caroline left England and returned to Hannover on October 10, 1822. His wife Mary continued to live in Slough until her death in January 1832. Their son John continued the astronomical observations of his father in Slough from 1822 to 1833. William Herschel was honored lately by the astronomical community by naming Moon crater Herschel (5.7S, 2.1W, 40 km diameter, in 1935), together with his son John by naming Mars crater Herschel (14.9S, 230.3W, 304 km diameter, in 1973), and a crater on Saturn's moon Mimas (2.9N, 109.5W, in 1982). John and Caroline Herschel are honored with separate Moon craters. Asteroid (2000) Herschel was discovered by J.

Schubart at Sternwarte Sonneberg on July 29, 1960, and provisionally designated 1960 OA; a prediscovery observation had been designated 1934 NX. The William Herschel Telescope, within the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes on the Canary Islands, was named after him, as was ESA's "Far IR and Submillimeter Space Telescope (FIRST)," an astronomical satellite to be launched in 2007. As the most renowned astronomer of his time, William Herschel contributed significantly to most branches of astronomy: He also investigated the proper motion of stars and derived the peculiar motion of the solar system toward the direction of constellation Hercules, modelled the Milky Way galaxy from stellar statistics, and speculated about the nature of the nebulae, including a discussion of the possibility of external island universes (galaxies) which had been brought up by Kant. He also contributed to physics (especially optics) and, e.g., discovered the infrared light . Links BBC - Solar System - William Herschel (pictures, video, facts & news) Asteroids explained Patrick Moore describes the asteroid belt and its discovery.

Sir Patrick Moore explains how the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter was discovered. He also talks about Bode's Law, an 18th century empirical rule that was once thought to predict planets' orbits. It is now discredited by astronomers, including Sir Patrick. About William Herschel Frederick William Herschel,KH, FRS (German: Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel; 15 November 1738 – 25 August 1822) was a British astronomer and composer of German origin, and brother of fellow astronomer Caroline Herschel, with whom he worked. Born in the Electorate of Hanover, Herschel followed his father into the Military Band of Hanover, before migrating to Great Britain in 1757 at the age of nineteen. Herschel constructed his first large telescope in 1774, after which he spent nine years carrying out sky surveys to investigate double stars. The resolving power of the Herschel telescopes revealed that the nebulae in the Messier catalogue were clusters of stars.

Herschel published catalogues of nebulae in 1802 (2,500 objects) and in 1820 (5,000 objects). In the course of an observation on 13 March 1781 he realized that one celestial body he had observed was not a star, but a planet, Uranus. This was the first planet to be discovered since antiquity and Herschel became famous overnight. As a result of this discovery, George III appointed him Court Astronomer. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society and grants were provided for the construction of new telescopes. Herschel pioneered the use of astronomical spectrophotometry as a diagnostic tool, using prisms and temperature measuring equipment to measure the wavelength distribution of stellar spectra. Other work included an improved determination of the rotation period of Mars, the discovery that the Martian polar caps vary seasonally, the discovery of Titania and Oberon (moons of Uranus) and Enceladus and Mimas (moons of Saturn). In addition, Herschel discovered infrared radiation. Herschel was made a Knight of the Royal Guelphic Order in 1816.

He was the first President of the Royal Astronomical Society when it was founded in 1820. He died in August 1822, and his work was continued by his only son, John Herschel. William Herschel William Herschel Location of death: Slough, Buckinghamshire, England Cause of death: unspecified Remains: Buried, St. Laurence Churchyard, Upton, Berkshire, England Gender: Male Nationality: England Executive summary: Mapped heavens, discovered Uranus Frederick William Herschel, generally known as Sir William Herschel, English astronomer, was born at Hanover on the 15th of November 1738. His father was a musician employed as hautboy player in the Hanoverian guard. The family had left Moravia for Saxony in the early part of the 17th century on account of religious troubles, they themselves being Protestants. Herschel's earlier education was necessarily of a very limited character, chiefly owing to the warlike commotions of his country; but being at all times an indomitable student, he, by his own exertions, more than repaired this deficiency.

He became a very skilful musician, both theoretical and practical; while his attainments as a self-taught mathematician were fully adequate to the prosecution of those branches of astronomy which he so eminently advanced and adorned. Whatever he did he did methodically and thoroughly; and in this methodical thoroughness lay the secret of what Fran�ois Arago very properly termed his astonishing scientific success. In 1752, at the age of fourteen, he joined the band of the Hanoverian guard, and with his detachment visited England in 1755, accompanied by his father and eldest brother; in the following year he returned to his native country; but the hardships of campaigning during the Seven Years' War imperilling his health, his parents privately removed him from the regiment, and on the 26th of July 1757 despatched him to England. There, as might have been expected, the earlier part of his career was attended with formidable difficulties and much privation. We find him engaged in several towns in the north of England as organist and teacher of music, which were not lucrative occupations.

But the tide of his fortunes began to flow when he obtained in 1766 the appointment of organist to the Octagon chapel in Bath, at that time the resort of the wealth and fashion of the city. During the next five or six years he became the leading musical authority, and the director of all the chief public musical entertainments at Bath. His circumstances having thus become easier, he revisited Hanover for the purpose of bringing back with him his sister Caroline Herschel , whose services he much needed in his multifarious undertakings. She arrived in Bath in August 1772, being at that time in her twenty-third year.

She thus describes her brother's life soon after her arrival: "He used to retire to bed with a bason of milk or a glass of water, with Smith's Harmonics and Ferguson's Astronomy, etc., and so went to sleep buried under his favorite authors; and his first thoughts on waking were how to obtain instruments for viewing those objects himself of which he had been reading." It is not without significance that we find him thus reading Smith's Harmonics; to that study loyalty to his profession would impel him; as a reward for his thoroughness this led him to Smith's Optics; and this, by a natural sequence, again led him to astronomy, for the purposes of which the chief optical instruments were devised. It was in this way that he was introduced to the writings of Ferguson and Keill, and subsequently to those of Lalande, whereby he educated himself to become an astronomer of undying fame. In those days telescopes were very rare, very expensive and not very efficient, for the Dollonds had not as yet perfected even their beautiful little achromatics of 2 3/4 inches aperture.

So Herschel was obliged to content himself with hiring a small Gregorian reflector of about 2 inch aperture, which he had seen exposed for loan in a tradesman's shop. Not satisfied with this implement, he procured a small lens of about 18 feet focal length, and set his sister to work on a pasteboard tube to match it, so as to make him a telescope. This unsatisfactory material was soon replaced by tin, and thus a sorry sort of vision was obtained of Jupiter, Saturn and the moon. He then sought in London for a reflector of much larger dimensions; but no such instrument was on sale; and the terms demanded for the construction of a reflecting telescope of 5 or 6 feet focal length he regarded as too exorbitant even for the gratification of such desires as his own. So he was driven to the only alternative that remained; he must himself build a large telescope.

His first step in this direction was to purchase the debris of an amateur's implements for grinding and polishing small mirrors; and thus, by slow degrees, and by indomitable perseverance, he in 1774 had, as he says, the satisfaction of viewing the heavens with a Newtonian telescope of 6 feet focal length made by his own bands. But he was not contented to be a mere star-gazer; on the contrary he had from the very first conceived the gigantic project of surveying the entire heavens, and, if possible, of ascertaining the plan of their general structure by a settled mode of procedure if only he could provide himself with adequate instrumental means. For this purpose he, his brother and his sister toiled for many years at the grinding and polishing of hundreds of specula, always retaining the best and recasting the others, until the most perfect of the earlier products had been surpassed This was the work of the daylight in those seasons of the year when the fashionable visitors of Bath had quitted the place, and had thus freed the family from professional duties. After 1774 every available hour of the night was devoted to the long-hoped for scrutiny of the skies.

In those days no machinery had been invented for the construction of telescopic mirrors; the man who had the hardihood to undertake polishing them doomed himself to walk leisurely and uniformly round an upright post for many hours, without removing his hands from the mirror, until his work was done. On these occasions Herschel received his food from the hands of his faithful sister. But his reward was nigh. In May 1780 his first two papers containing some results of his observations on the variable star "Mira" and the mountains of the moon were communicated to the Royal Society through the influential introduction of Dr. William Watson. Herschel had made his acquaintance in a characteristic manner. In order to obtain a sight of the moon the astronomer had taken his telescope into the street opposite his house; the celebrated physician happening to pass at the time, and seeing his eye removed for a moment from the instrument, requested permission to take his place. The mutual courtesies and intelligent conversation which ensued soon ripened this casual acquaintance into a solid and enduring regard. The phenomena of variable stars were examined by Herschel as a guide to what might be occurring in our own sun.

The sun, he knew, rotated on its axis, and he knew that dark spots often exist on its photosphere; the questions that he put to himself were -- Are there dark spots also on variable stars? Do the stars also rotate on their axes? Or are they sometimes partially eclipsed by the intervention of opaque bodies? And he went on to enquire, What are these singular spots upon the sun? And have they any practical relation to the inhabitants of this planet? To these questions he applied his telescopes and his thoughts; and he communicated the results to the Royal Society in no less than six memoirs, occupying very many pages in the Philosophical Transactions, and extending in date from 1780 to 1801. It was in the latter year that these remarkable papers culminated in the inquiry whether any relation could be traced in the recurrence of sun-spots, regarded as evidences of solar activity, and the varying seasons of our planet, as exhibited by the varying price of corn. Herschel's reply was inconclusive; nor has a final solution of the related problems yet been obtained.

In 1781 he communicated to the Royal Society the first of a series of papers on the rotation of the planets and of their several satellites. The object which he had in view was not so much to ascertain the times of their rotation as to discover whether those rotations are strictly uniform. From the result he expected to gather, by analogy, the probability of an alteration in the length of our own day. These inquiries occupy the greater part of seven memoirs extending from 1781 to 1797. While engaged on them he noticed the curious appearance of a white spot near te each of the poles of the planet Mars. On investigating the inclination of its axis to the plane of its orbit, and finding that it differed little from that of the earth, he concluded that its changes of climate also would resemble our own, and that these white patches were probably polar snow. He also discovered that, as far as his observations extended, the times of the rotations of the various satellites round their axes conform to the analogy of our moon by equaling the times of their revolution around their primaries. Here again we perceive that his discoveries arose out of the systematic and comprehensive nature of his investigation. Nothing with such a man is accidental.

In the same year (1781) Herschel made a discovery which completely altered the character of his professional life. In the course of a methodical review of the heavens he lighted on an object which at first he supposed to be a comet, but which, by its subsequent motions and appearance, averred itself to be new planet, moving outside the orbit of Saturn. The name of Georgium Sidus was by him assigned to it, but has by general consent been laid aside in favor of Uranus. The object was detected with a 7 foot reflector having an aperture of 6-1/2 inches; subsequently, when he had provided himself with a much more powerful telescope, of 20 foot focal length, he discovered, as he believed, no less than six Uranian satellites. Modern observations, while abolishing four of these supposed attendants, have added two others apparently not observed by Herschel. Seven memoirs on the subject were communicated by him to the Royal Society, extending from the date of the discovery in 1781 to 1815. A noteworthy peculiarity in Herschel's mode of observation led to the discovery of this planet.

He had observed that the spurious diameters of stars are not much affected by increasing the magnifying powers, but that the case is different with other celestial objects; hence if anything in his telescopic field struck him as unusual in aspect, be immediately varied the magnifying power in order to decide its nature. Thus Uranus was discovered; and had a similar method been applied to Neptune, that planet would have been found at Cambridge some months before it was recognized at Berlin. We now come to the beginning of Herschel's most important series of observations, culminating in what ought probably to be regarded as his capital discovery. A material part of the task which he had set himself embraced the determination of the relative distances of the stars from our sun and from each other. Now, in the course of his scrutiny of the heavens, he had observed many stars in apparently very close contiguity, but often differing greatly in relative brightness.

He concluded that, on the average, the brighter star would be the nearer to us, the smaller enormously more distant; and considering that an astronomer on the earth, in consequence of its immense orbital displacement of some 180 millions of miles every six months, would see such a pair of stars under different perspective aspects, he perceived that the measurement of these changes should lead to an approximate determination of the stars' relative distances. He therefore mapped down the places and aspects of all the double stars that he met with, and communicated in 1782 and 1785 very extensive catalogues of the results. Indeed, his very last scientific memoir, sent to the Royal Astronomical Society in the year 1822, when he was its first president and already in the eighty-fourth year of his age, related to these investigations. In the memoir of 1782 he threw out the hint that these apparently contiguous stars might be genuine pairs in mutual revolution; but he significantly added that the time had not yet arrived for settling the question. Eleven years afterwards (1793), he remeasured the relative positions of many such couples, and we may conceive what his feelings must have been at finding his prediction verified.

For he ascertained that some of these stars circulated around each other, after the manner required by the laws of gravitation, and thus demonstrated the action among the distant members of the starry firmament of the same mechanical laws which bind together the harmonious motions of our solar system. This sublime discovery, announced in 1802, would of itself suffice to immortalize his memory. If only he had lived long enough to learn the approximate distances of some of these binary combinations, he would at once have been able to calculate their masses relative to that of our own sun; and the quantities being, as we now know, strictly comparable, he would have found another of his analogical conjectures realized. In the year 1782 Herschel was invited to Windsor by King George III , and accepted the king's offer to become his private astronomer, and henceforth devote himself wholly to a scientific career. His salary was fixed at �200 per annum, to which an addition of �50 per annum was subsequently made for the astronomical assistance of his sister. Dr.

Watson, to whom alone the amount was mentioned, made the natural remark, "Never before was honor purchased by a monarch at so cheap a rate." In this way the great astronomer removed from Bath, first to Datchet and soon afterwards permanently to Slough, within easy access of his royal patron at Windsor. The old pursuits at Bath were soon resumed at Slough, but with renewed vigor and without the former professional interruptions. The greater part, in fact, of the papers already referred to are dated from Datchet and Slough; for the magnificent astronomical speculations in which he was engaged, though for the most part conceived in the earlier portion of his philosophical career, required years of patient observation before they could be fully examined and realized. It was at Slough in 1783 that he wrote his first memorable paper on the "Motion of the Solar System in Space", a sublime speculation, yet through his genius realized by considerations of the utmost simplicity. He returned to the same subject with fuller details in 1805. It was also after his removal to Slough that he published his first memoir on the construction of the heavens, which from the first had been the inspiring idea of his varied toils.

In a long series of remarkable papers, addressed as usual to the Royal Society, and extending from the year 1784 to 1818, when he was eighty years of age, he demonstrated the fact that our sun is a star situated not far from the bifurcation of the Milky Way, and that all the stars visible to us lie more or less in clusters scattered throughout a comparatively thin, but immensely extended stratum. At one time he imagined that his powerful instruments had pierced through this stellar stratum, and that he had approximately determined the form of some of its boundaries. In the last of his memoirs, having convinced himself of his error, he admitted that to his telescopes the Milky Way was "fathomless." On either side of this assemblage of stars, presumably in ceaseless motion round their common center of gravity, Herschel discovered a canopy of discrete nebulous masses, such as those from the condensation of which he supposed the whole stellar universe to have been formed -- a magnificent conception, pursued with a force of genius and put to the practical test of observation. with an industry almost incredible.

Hitherto we have said nothing about the great reflecting telescope, of 40 foot focal length and 4 foot aperture, the construction of which is often, though mistakenly, regarded as his chief performance. The full description of this celebrated instrument will be found in the 85th volume of the Transactions of the Royal Society. On the day that it was finished (August 28, 1789) Herschel saw at the first view, in a grandeur not witnessed before, the Saturnian system with six satellites, five of which had been discovered long before by Christiaan Huygens and Giovanni Domenico Cassini , while the sixth, subsequently named Enceladus, he had, two years before, sighted by glimpses in his exquisite little telescope of 6-1/2 inch aperture, but now saw in unmistakable brightness with the towering giant he had just completed. On the 17th of September he discovered a seventh, which proved to be the nearest to the globe of Saturn. It has since received the name of Mimas.

It is somewhat remarkable that, notwithstanding his long and repeated scrutinies of this planet, the eighth satellite, Hyperion, and the crape ring should have escaped him. Herschel married, on the 8th of May 1788, the widow of Mr. John Pitt, a wealthy London merchant, by whom he had an only son, John Herschel . The prince regent conferred a Hanoverian knighthood upon him in 1816. But a far more valued and less tardy distinction was the Copley medal assigned to him by his associates in the Royal Society in 1781. He died at Slough on the 25th of August 1822, in the eighty-fourth year of his age, and was buried under the tower of St. Laurences Church, Upton, within a few hundred yards of the old site of the 40 foot telescope. A mural tablet on the wall of the church bears a Latin inscription from the pen of the late Dr. Goodall, provost of Eton College.

William Hershel discovers Uranus - Mar 13, 1781 - HISTORY.com William Hershel discovers Uranus Publisher A+E Networks The German-born English astronomer William Hershel discovers Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun. Herschel’s discovery of a new planet was the first to be made in modern times, and also the first to be made by use of a telescope, which allowed Herschel to distinguish Uranus as a planet, not a star, as previous astronomers believed. Herschel, who was later knighted for his historic discovery, named the planet Georgium Sidus, or the “Georgian Planet,” in honor of King George III of England. However, German astronomer Johann Bode proposed the name “Uranus” for the celestial body in order to conform to the classical mythology-derived names of other known planets. Uranus, the ancient Greek deity of the heavens, was a predecessor of the Olympian gods. By the mid-19th century, it was also the generally accepted name of the seventh planet from the sun. The planet Uranus is a gas giant like Jupiter and Saturn and is made up of hydrogen, helium, and methane.

The third largest planet, Uranus orbits the sun once every 84 earth years and is the only planet to spin perpendicular to its solar orbital plane. In January 1986, the unmanned U.S. spacecraft Voyager 2 visited the planet, discovering 10 additional moons to the five already known, and a system of faint rings around the gas giant. Related Videos William Herschel Biography William Herschel Biography By Nola Taylor Redd, Space.com Contributor | September 4, 2012 01:51pm ET MORE Scouring the heavens with his sister, Caroline, Sir William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus and several moons around other gas giants. In the course of his studies of the night sky, he also compiled a catalog of 2,500 celestial objects that is still in use today. But it wasn't until his mid-30s that he began to turn his eyes to the expanse above; he started his professional life as a musician. Astronomer William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus.

Credit: Smithsonian Institution A musical beginning Born in Germany as Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel, the astronomer was the son of Anna Ilse Moritzen and Issak Herschel. His father was a military musician, and young William played in the same band in his early years. In 1759, Herschel left Germany for England, where he taught music before becoming an organist. In 1772, William's sister, Caroline, moved to England to live with her brother and train as a singer. During this time, Herschel's interest in astronomy grew significantly. He rented a small telescope, and his desire to own a larger instrument led him to the process of grinding and polishing his own mirrors. Caroline never married, but served as his assistant until Herschel's death. She was the first woman to discover a comet, ultimately finding eight. She also discovered several deep-sky objects and was the first woman to be given a paid scientific position and to receive an honorary membership into the Royal Society. In 1788, at the age of 50, Herschel married the widow Mary Pitt.

Their son, John, was born in 1792, and followed in his father's astronomical footsteps. Searching the skies On March 13, 1781, Herschel noticed a small object that, over the course of several nights, was slowly moving across the sky. At first he thought he had found a comet , but further observation revealed that the object was a planet. Herschel lobbied to name the new body 'Georgium Sidus', after King George III, but it was eventually named Uranus after the Greek god of the sky. As a result of his discovery, the monarch knighted Herschel and appointed him to the position of court astronomer. The attached pension allowed him to conclude his musical career and focus his full attention on the skies. When Herschel was subsequently elected a member of the prestigious Royal Society, he received a copy of Charles Messier's "Catalog of Nebulae and Star Clusters," a list of diverse nebulae in the night sky. The catalog piqued his interest, and he began to examine the fuzzy objects. On Oct.

23, 1783, he began a sky survey of his own, standing on a ladder while peering through his telescope and describing the objects he saw to his sister, Caroline. By pointing the stationary telescope at a single strip of the sky, he was able to observe east-west bands over the course of the night. The next night, he would adjust his telescope to a higher or lower point and observe another parallel strip. Eventually, he examined the entire swatch of sky that could be seen over Great Britain. Over 20 years, he observed 2,500 new nebulae and star clusters and recorded them in "The General Catalogue of Nebulae." The catalog was eventually enlarged and renamed the "New General Catalogue," and many non-stellar objects are identified by their NGC numbers. Of the 7,840 nebulae and clusters in the catalog today, 4,630 were discovered by Herschel and his son. In 1789, Herschel finished construction on 40-foot-long (12 meters) telescope, the largest of the day.

But the unwieldy instrument came with a number of problems, and Herschel tended to use the smaller, 20-foot (6-meter) telescope. Appearing like a cyclops gazing off into space, Saturn's moon Mimas and its large Herschel Crater are profiled in this view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft taken on Feb. 13, 2010. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute Herschel discovered several moons around the gas giants. In 1787, he discovered two moons around Uranus: Titania and Oberon. In 1789, using his larger telescope, he found Saturn' s sixth and seventh moons , Enceladus and Mimas. [ Meet Mimas: Saturn's Death Star Moon ] In 1800, Herschel performed a simple experiment determining the temperature of the different colors of sunlight passed through a prism. He noticed the region just beyond the red color was even higher than light in the visible spectrum, and used his measurements to deduce the presence of what is now known to be infrared radiation. The European Space Agency's infrared space observatory was subsequently named for him.

Herschel proposed the name " asteroids " for the large bodies discovered in 1801. He was elected vice president of the newly formed Royal Astronomical Society in 1820 and president the following year. His last published paper cataloged 145 double stars . Herschel died in England on Aug. 25, 1822, at the age of 84. Craters on the moon, Mars, and Mimas are named for the astronomer. The asteroid 2000 Herschel bears his name, and the symbol for the planet Uranus features the capital letter H in his honor. — Nola Taylor Redd BBC - Bristol - History - The Georgian planet You are in: Bristol > History > Historic Figures > The Georgian planet The Georgian planet There are not many cities in the world where a new planet was discovered from one of its gardens - but the Georgian city of Bath is proud to claim just that honour. Uranus facts Uranus was the first planet to be discovered in modern times. It was discovered in 1781 by William Herschel using a home-made telescope from his garden in Bath.

It was the first planet to be discovered with the aid of a telescope. Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun and the third largest (by diameter). Uranus’s rotation axis is tilted at 98 degrees to the vertical – this means that its ‘north’ pole is actually below its south pole. Each of Uranus' poles faces away from the Sun for half of the planet's orbit. So each pole alternates between nights and days that last for 42 years. The blue colour of Uranus’s clouds is caused by the absorption of red light by methane in its atmosphere. Uranus has 21 named moons and six unnamed ones – the five largest - Oberon, Miranda, Titania, Umbriel and Ariel - are named after characters in literature rather than mythology. Like the other gas planets, Uranus has rings. Uranus spins on its axis in just over 17 hours but takes 84 years to orbit the Sun on an elliptic orbit. William Herschel named it the Georgian Planet. It was later given the name Uranus (Greek god of the heavens), following the tradition of naming planets after Classical gods.

The discovery was made in 1781 by musician and astronomer William Herschel, who made a huge impact on our understanding of our solar system and whose quest for knowledge took his sights deep into space. For thousands of years the only known planets were the Earth, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, but when Herschel discovered Uranus, the quest for other unseen planets began. Born Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel in Hanover, Germany, in 1738, he was the second son of musician Isaac Herschel and his wife Ilse. In 1753 William began playing in the Hanoverian Foot Guards Band and in 1756, at the age of 18, he came to England, where he found work as a musical copyist and choirmaster and in 1766 was the organist at the Octagon Chapel in Bath. Bath resident In 1780, he also became the director of the Bath Orchestra, and conducted some of his original music - he wrote more than 20 symphonies - at the Pump Room.

Once he became established at number 19 New King Street in Bath he purchased equipment, and began perfecting the craft of making astronomical mirrors and telescopes. Assisted by his younger sister Caroline, he watched the night sky through his telescope, finding large numbers of faint patches of light that he began to methodically catalogue. This grew into the General Catalogue of Nebulae which included the discovery of The Saturn Nebula, Eskmo Nebula and Cat's Eye Nebula - all recently commemorated as Royal Mail stamps. His dedication and hard work paid off on the evening of 13 March 1781, when he discovered a celestial object which he named Georgium Sidus (the Georgian planet), but would later become the planet Uranus. He even claimed in 1797 that he saw rings around the seventh planet and drew a small diagram of the ring and noted that it was "a little inclined to the red". For nearly two centuries the claim was dismissed as a mistake but in 1977 rings around Uranus were detected during an experiment. Court Astronomer Following his discovery of the seventh planet, King George III granted Herschel the post of Court Astronomer.

The £200 per year which came with the post, plus what he made selling telescopes of his own creation, finally permitted Herschel to turn his full attention to astronomy, to the grinding of his own lenses and to making better telescopes. In 1786, he moved to Slough and built a 20ft-long telescope with which the following year he found the moons Titania and Oberon in orbit around Uranus. In 1788, at the age of 50, William married Mary Pitt and four years later they had a son John who would later became a famous astronomer in his own right. The following year Herschel constructed the largest telescope of the day. It was 40ft long and had a 48 inch mirror. With it he discovered Enceladus and Mimas circling the planet Saturn and continued finding deep sky objects such as nebulae and galaxies, finding more than 2,500 of them in the next 20 years, including the Galaxy NGC 2903. Then, in 1800, Herschel was observing the sun and noted that certain filters became hotter than others.

He decided to conduct an experiment to see if this effect was due to their colour - it was the discovery of infrared radiation. In 1816 William Herschel was knighted, and then in 1821, a year before his death at the age of 84, Herschel became president of the Royal Astronomical Society. Name lives on Herschel was buried beneath the tower in the Church of St Laurence at Upton, but his name continues to be remembered by astronomers. A crater on the moon was named after him in 1935 and since then craters on Mars and Mimas have also been given his name. An asteroid was named Herschel in 1960 and most recently a deep space telescope received his name. "I have looked further into space than any human being did before me." William Herschel The Herschel Space Observatory is a space-based telescope that will study the universe by the light of the far-infrared and sub-millimeter portions of the spectrum. It is expected to reveal new information about the earliest, most distant stars and galaxies, as well as those closer to home in space and time and will also take a unique look at our own solar system.

It is scheduled to be launched in 2008, as part of the European Space Agency's Horizon 2000 programme and will remain an active observatory for at least three years. In 1981, exactly 200 years after his discovery of Uranus, Herschel's former home at 19 New King Street in Bath was inaugurated as a museum. It is now an accredited museum governed by the Herschel House Trust and has Sir Patrick Moore as its patron. The city is also home to the William Herschel Society. More details about both organisations can be found by clicking on the links below. Uranus - Space Discovery Space Discovery Uranus THE DISCOVERY OF URANUS (NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, "Voyager at Uranus: 1986," JPL 400-268, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., July 1985.) William Herschel and the Discovery of Uranus A professional interest in musical theory, which broadened to encompass a general study of mathematics, preceded Sir William Herschel's passionate interest in astronomy and led to his discovery of the seventh planet.

He was born Frederich Wilhelm Herschel in Hanover in 1738. His father, a bandmaster in the Hanoverian Guards, encouraged him toward a musical career, and Herschel joined the Hanoverian Guards as a musician in his midteens. He moved to England in his early twenties after service in the Seven Years' War. With the goal of becoming a composer, he traveled throughout England working as a freelance musician, music copier, and organist. In 1766, Herschel won appointment as the organist for the new Octagon Chapel in Bath. He was later named director of public concerts for the city. Herschel read widely on the subjects of harmonics, mathematics, and philosophy. Historians believe the first book he read on astronomy was James Ferguson's "Astronomy Explained Upon Sir Isaac Newton's Principles, and Made Easy to Those Who Have Not Studied Mathematics." By his late thirties, his dabbling in astronomy had become a more consuming hobby. He put rudi- mentary telescopes together from scraps and used parts. The more of the sky he saw, the more he wanted to see.

By late 1773, when he couldn't afford to buy the most powerful telescope available, he determined to build his own. Herschel and his brother Alexander and sister Caroline, also musicians, shared a house in Bath. Building William's telescopes became a family affair. Alexander helped with the construction. "It was to my sorrow," wrote Caroline in her memoirs, "that I saw almost every room turned into a workshop ...Alex putting up a huge turning machine in a bedroom for turning patterns, grinding glasses and turning eyepieces." But Caroline, who would also become a talented astronomer, pitched in as well, even feeding Herschel his meals while he spent hours grinding or polishing by hand a metal speculum, or reflector, for his telescope. With the best of his telescopes (a 7-foot focal-length instrument with a 6.2-inch reflector), he began what he called "reviews of the heavens" from his garden. Over months of observations, he believed he'd spotted forests of trees on the moon and noted them in his meticulously kept log. He spent many of his observing hours studying double stars and decided to study generally the distribution of the stars and to try to calculate their distances.

While studying stars in the constellation Gemini the night of March 13, 1781, he found a disk-like object moving slowly across the starfield. He believed it to be a comet and reported his observation as such to the British Astronomer Royal. Within days, however, the object's orbit was calculated as one no comet would likely follow. In addition, it was so distant that, if it had been a comet, it would have been too small to be seen with the instruments of the day. News of the sighting spread quickly throughout the scientific community. Astronomers and mathematicians across Europe computed the object's approximate size and orbit and, by May 1781, concluded that 42-year-old amateur astronomer William Herschel of Bath had discovered a new planet as far beyond Saturn as Saturn is from the Sun. Many names were proposed for the new body: "Hypercronius" ("above Saturn"), "Minerva" (the Roman goddess of wisdom), and "Herschel" were candidates. Herschel offered "Georgium Sidus" ("The Georgian Planet") to flatter King George III of England and Herschel's native Hanover.

(Royal patronage would later support Herschel's work during his distinguished scientific career.) But, astronomy being an international concern and George being an unpopular monarch outside of England and Hanover, variations on his name were vetoed. Astronomers finally agreed upon "Uranus" ‹personification of the heavens in Greek mythology, son of Gaea (Earth) and, by her, father of Saturn and grandfather to Jupiter. Herschel, continually building bigger and better telescopes throughout his career, also discovered the Uranian moons Titania and Oberon in 1787. English astronomer William Lassell found Ariel and Umbriel in 1851. Herschel's son, John, named all four. They are the only moons in the solar system not called after figures in Greek and Roman mythology.

Instead, they are named for characters in English literature: Oberon and Titania are the king and queen of the fairies in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream"; Ariel and Umbriel appear in Alexander Pope's "Rape of the Lock"; Ariel also appears as a spirit in Shakespeare's "The Tempest." Miranda, discovered by the late American astronomer Gerald Kuiper in 1948, is named after Prospero's daughter in "The Tempest." FACTS ABOUT URANUS (Bevan M. French and Stephen P. Maran, eds., "A Meeting with the Universe," NASA EP-177, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1981.) The ancients knew of five planets in the sky. In less than a generation, all five have been brought close to us by spacecraft. Further out in space, three more planets await our inspection. Uranus, the first outward beyond Saturn, is nearly 3 billion kilometers (nearly 2 billion miles) from the Sun and takes 84 years to make one orbit around it. Pioneer 10 passed the orbit of Uranus, but did not come near the planet.

Uranus is another gas giant, smaller than Saturn, a cold world that is a distant greenish disk even in the largest telescopes. From Earth, we can see five moons circling the planet. Uranus has one unique property: its axis of rotation lies in the plane of its orbit rather than nearly vertical to it as is the case with the other planets. Because of this curious orientation, Uranus moves around the Sun, not so much like a top spinning on its end, but like a barrel rolling along on its side. The greatest Space Age discovery about Uranus was made in 1977, not from a spacecraft but rather with a telescope mounted in a high-altitude jet aircraft, the Kuiper Airborne Observatory. Like many great discoveries, it was entirely unexpected, and the scientists were looking at Uranus for something entirely different. They intended to study Uranus' atmosphere by measuring the light from a distant star as the planet passed slowly in front of it. What happened was that the star seemed to flicker on and off several times, long before and long after the planet had passed in front. The only explanation was that Uranus like Saturn and now Jupiter has rings!

The planet is surrounded by at least five and perhaps nine rings. The rings are dark, thin, narrow, and invisible from Earth, but they were thick enough to block out the light from the star. Uranus had its first visitor from Earth. The spacecraft Voyager 2 followed a path that took it past Uranus in 1986. The dark rings of Uranus were covered by telescopic observations from a NASA aircraft in 1977. The thin narrow rings, composed of dark particles, are invisible from Earth. They were discovered when they blocked the light of a distant star on a night when Uranus passed in front of it. The rotation axis of Uranus lies almost in the plane of its orbit around the Sun, so the ring system (in the plane of the planet's equator), appears like a gigantic bullseye as Uranus rolls around the Sun. Uranus (The following is from "The Solar System," NASA/ASEP, 1989, p. 10.) Uranus is named for the father of Saturn and grandfather of Jupiter. Uranus' symbol is the sign used for the metal platinum. This is the seventh planet from the Sun.

Uranus is the third largest planet in our solar system. William Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781. Uranus circles the Sun every 84.01 Earth years. One day on Uranus is 17 hours, 14 minutes, and 24 seconds long. The gravity of Uranus is .86 of Earth's gravity. Uranus is one-fifth denser than Earth. The diameter of Uranus is 32,116 miles. Uranus is 19 times Earth's distance from the Sun. Uranus' bluish-green color is caused by methane gas (natural gas). Uranus' atmosphere is made up of helium, hydrogen, and methane. Uranus has 15 moons (which are named for characters from famous plays). A. Cordelia F. Rosalind K. Miranda B. Ophelia G. Portia L. Ariel C. Bianca H. Cressida M. Umbriel D. Juliet I. Belinda N. Titania E. Desdemona J. Puck O. Oberon Uranus is tipped-over on its side.

Communication to Uranus takes about 2 hours and 45 minutes. Voyager 2's flyby of Uranus took place in January 1986. JPL SUMMARY OF URANUS (NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, "Our Solar System at a Glance," NASA Information Summaries, PMS 010-A (JPL), June 1991.) Uranus In January 1986, four and a half years after visiting Saturn, Voyager 2 completed the first close-up survey of the uranian system. The brief flyby revealed more information about Uranus and its retinue of icy moons than had been gleaned from ground observations since the planet's discovery over two centuries ago by the English astronomer William Herschel. Uranus, third largest of the planets, is an oddball of the solar system. Unlike the other planets (with the exception of Pluto), this giant lies tipped on its side with its north and south poles alternately facing the Sun during an 84-year swing around the solar system. During Voyager 2's flyby, the south pole faced the Sun.

Uranus might have been knocked over when an Earth-sized object collided with it early in the life of the solar system. Voyager 2 discovered that Uranus' magnetic field does not follow the usual north-south axis found on the other planets. Instead, the field is tilted 60 degrees and offset from the planet's center, a phenomenon that on Earth would be like having one magnetic pole in New York City and the other in the city of Djakarta, on the island of Java in Indonesia. Uranus' atmosphere consists mainly of hydrogen, with some 12 percent helium and small amounts of ammonia, methane and water vapor. The planet's blue color occurs because methane in its atmosphere absorbs all other colors. Wind speeds range up to 580 kilometers (360 miles) per hour, and temperatures near the cloud tops average -221 degrees Celsius (-366 degrees Fahrenheit). Uranus' sunlit south pole is shrouded in a kind of photochemical "smog" believed to be a combination of acetylene, ethane and other sunlight-generated chemicals.

Surrounding the planet's atmosphere and extending thousands of kilometers into space is a mysterious ultraviolet sheen known as "electroglow." Approximately 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) below Uranus' cloud tops, there is thought to be a scalding ocean of water and dissolved ammonia some 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles) deep. Beneath this ocean is an Earth-sized core of heavier materials. Voyager 2 discovered 10 new moons, 16-169 kilometers (10-105 miles) in diameter, orbiting Uranus. The five previously known‹Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon‹range in size from 520 to 1,610 kilometers (323 to 1,000 miles) across. Representing a geological showcase, these five moons are half-ice, half-rock spheres that are cold and dark and show evidence of past activity, including faulting and ice flows. The most remarkable of Uranus' moons is Miranda. Its surface features high cliffs as well as canyons, craterpocked plains and winding valleys.

The sharp variations in terrain suggest that, after the moon formed, it was smashed apart by a collision with another body‹an event not unusual in our solar system, which contains many objects that have impact craters or are fragments from large impacts. What is extraordinary is that Miranda apparently reformed with some of the material that had been in its interior exposed on its surface. Uranus was thought to have nine dark rings; Voyager 2 imaged eleven. In contrast to Saturn's rings, which are composed of bright particles, Uranus' rings are primarily made up of dark, boulder-sized chunks. Discovering New Planets | National Air and Space Museum Photo from Zeitlin & VerBrugge Los Angeles, CA These two pictures of Uranus were compiled from images recorded by Voyager 2 on Jan. 10, 1986, when the NASA spacecraft was 18 million kilometers (11 million miles) from the planet. The planet Uranus was discovered by the noted British astronomer, Sir William Herschel, on March 13, 1781. Actually, the planet had been observed numerous times by other astronomers as early as 1690, but it was thought to be another star.

The planet was discovered accidentally while Herschel was surveying all stars down to magnitude eight — those that are about ten times dimmer than can be seen by the naked eye. One "star" seemed different and within a year was shown to have a planetary orbit 18 times farther from the Sun than Earth. The new planet was named Uranus after the father of Saturn in Roman mythology. William Herschel built his own telescopes, including one which had a focal length of 6 meters (20 feet) and a larger telescope of the same design with a 12 meter (40 foot) focal length. Discovery of Ceres In the course of preparing a star catalog in 1801, the Sicilian astronomer Guiseppi Piazzi accidentally discovered a small planet between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter . He named the planet Ceres after the Sicilian god of the harvest. Ceres is now known to be the largest of thousands of minor planets, or asteroids , most of which have orbits in the region of the solar system between Mars and Jupiter. Discovery of Neptune Unlike Uranus and Ceres, Neptune was not discovered by accident.

It was proposed that a planet beyond Uranus could account for irregularities in Uranus' orbit. Independently, two astronomers, John Couch Adams in England and Urbain-Jean-Joseph Le Verrier in France, calculated the position of this yet unknown planet. The search began. The British astronomer James Challis, using Adams' predictions, observed the planet on the night of August 4, 1846, but failed to compare his observations with those of the previous night and did not recognize the planet. On September 23, 1846, the planet was finally found on the first try by the German astronomer Johann Galle using Le Verrier's predictions. Who Discovered Neptune? Who should receive credit for discovering Neptune? Adams or Le Verrier who predicted its position? Challis who saw it but did not know it? Galle who found it? Controversy raged. It was fortunate that Neptune was discovered in the mid-19th century. Just 30 years later the planet was far from the positions predicted by both Adams and Le Verrier.

Full disk view of Neptune courtesy of Voyager Discovery of Pluto Photographic Plate Several astronomers interpreted irregularities in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune as being caused by a more distant planet. Among these astronomers was the American Percival Lowell who is credited with the successful prediction of the planet's orbit. Lowell also started the search for the planet which was ultimately found in 1930 by his successors at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona. The photographic plate on the left is a copy of one of the plates used to discover Pluto. The image was collected on Jan. 23, 1930 and was compared with other plates collected that month. Lent by Lowell Observatory The Blink Comparator Used to Discover Pluto Percival Lowell purchased this Carl Zeiss blink comparator in 1911. While using it to search for a new planet in 1930, Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto. The instrument allows the operator to switch the view back and forth between two photographic plates taken several days apart. The plates are exactly aligned so the distant stars remain stationary, but a planet-like object will appear to move from side to side among them.

The blinking technique Clyde Tombaugh used to discover Pluto is similar to the method used by Henrietta Leavitt and others a century ago to identify distant Cepheid variable stars. Cepheids are still important "astronomical yardsticks" for measuring distances to galaxies. See this exhibition on display at the Independence Ave at 6th St, SW Washington, DC 20560 Tour the solar system: Uranus | Astronomy.com Tour the Solar System Tour the solar system: Uranus Tour the solar system: Uranus In this episode of the "Tour the solar system" series, Associate Editor Liz Kruesi explores the oddball planet that seems to roll around the Sun on its side and the new studies that clearly show Uranus is anything but dull. By Liz Kruesi | Published: Wednesday, May 18, 2011 Uranus' first visible dark spot indicates strong winds on the planet. NASA/ESA/L. Sromovsky and P. Fry (University of Wisconsin-Madison)/H. Hammel (Space Science Institute)/K. Rages (SETI Institute) The seventh planet from the Sun, Uranus is named after the Greek god of the sky.

British astronomer William Herschel discovered it with the aid of a telescope March 13, 1781. Uranus is the third-largest planet in diameter in our solar system (with Jupiter and Saturn being larger planets). Much of the seventh planet is composed of hydrogen, helium, methane, ammonia, and water. Uranus’ blue-green color is actually a result of the planet’s methane, which absorbs red wavelengths and reflects blue. The planet likely has a small rocky core. The full text of this article is available to registered users of Astronomy.com. Register now! Registration is FREE and takes only a few seconds to complete. If you are already registered on Astronomy.com, please log in below. Already Registered? Get instant access to subscriber content on Astronomy.com! Access our interactive Atlas of the Stars Get full access to StarDome PLUS Columnist articles Search and view our equipment review archive Receive full access to our Ask Astro answers BONUS web extras not included in the magazine Much more!

Question: Astronomer William Herschel announced the discovery of which planet in our solar system in March 1781?
Answer: Uranus